Analytics and Interview

On 16 January 2015 late in the evening the website of the Ministry of Justice published a statement that the NGO Committee Against Torture had been added to the register of non-profit organizations designated as ‘foreign agents’.

Tanya Lokshina is the Russia program director at Human Rights Watch and Honorary Participant of International Youth Human Rights Movement:
As the crisis in Ukraine escalated this spring, the Kremlin’s vicious crackdown on civil society also escalated. Space for independent civic activity in Russia is shrinking dramatically, but international policymakers and the media have been understandably too distracted to do much about it.
Since early spring, it seems as though every week brings a new pernicious law or legislative proposal.

Earlier this year, the correspondent of Youth Human Rights Movement from Germany Jakob Stürmann interviewed Konstantin Baranov, member of the Coordination Council of the International Youth Human Rights Movement. They discussed so called “law against homosexual propaganda” and the overall situation of LGBT in Russia.

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CIVIL NEWS

Oleg Sentsov, Olexander Kolchenko, Hennadiy Afanasiev and Oleksiy Chyrniy have been held in Russian jails for two years already under fabricated charges of ‘terrorism’. We consider it being necessary to express solidarity with those who are persecuted due to their pro-Ukrainian views, civic stand and desire for freedom in Russia-annexed Crimea.

Helsinki Committee of Armenia has published “Human Rights in Armenia 2014” Annual Report. The report reflects on the Right to Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, Torture, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, Political Persecutions, Freedom of Conscience and Religion, The Rights of the Child, Protection of Labor Rights.

«We have a few questions for you,» a border guard told Sinaver Kadyrov, a Crimean Tatar activist, at the Armyansk checkpoint in northern Crimea on Jan. 23. Kadyrov was on his way to Kherson, in southern Ukraine, to fly to Turkey for medical treatment. It was the beginning of an ordeal that ended with a local court expelling him from Crimea, his home of almost 25 years.

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Russia rejected most of the concrete and substantial recommendations done at the session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, 20 September in Geneva as the result of the second circle of the Universal Periodic Review.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is one of procedures within the UN human rights framework that sees each state presenting a detailed report on its human rights situation for four years. Each country then accepts or rejects recommendations from other states and voluntary commits to actually implement the recommendations it accepted.

Moscow Helsinki Group has published a report on the law ‘On the protection of children from information causing harm to their health and development,’ a law commonly referred to as the law on the ‘blacklist’ of websites.

On 6 February 2013 eleven Russian NGOs submitted an official application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg against Federal Law No. 121-FZ of 20 June 2012 “On introducing amendments to specific laws of the Russian Federation concerning the regulation of the activity of non-profit organizations acting as foreign agents” (below – the “Law on Foreign Agents”).

US Senator Benjamin Cardin has written to the Nobel Committee nominating the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Ludmila Alekseeva, for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, Voice of America's Russian service, which has a copy of the senator's letter, reports.

January 17, 2013 organizers of the picket against the law on amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences (Article 6.13.1) have applied to the center "E" (anti-extremism center), the Investigative Committee and the Administration of Voronezh city on the fact of threats to life and health of the protesters and counteraction to the public event.